A STUDY OF COGNITIVE DYSFUNCTIONS IN ANEMIA

Abstract

Introduction:Anemia is one of the commonest conditions worldwide and it is known to produce cognitive deficits in children adolescents and adults. Now compelling evidence is emerging about the detrimental effect of anaemia on the cognitive functions of the brain. Against this background the current study has been done to determine the extent to which anaemia is causative of cognitive dysfunction. Methods: 30 patients with anaemia were matched against 30 controls . The tools used were SMMSE, BCRS, TMT-Band DSST. Data were presented as mean and analyzed using students t test , and chi square test. Results: Anaemics performed poorly in TMT-B and DSST and made more number of errors in both the tests which was very highly significant. Anemic had very highly significant cognitive dysfunction in the orientation, attention, language and construction domains of SMMSE and also on the total scores. Anaemics also had very highly significant dysfunction on the domains of concentration recent memory and past memory of BCRS. Conclusion: Anaemic patients had significant circumscribed areas of cognitive dysfunctions compared to the control group but a clear relation between the severity of anaemia and the severity of cognitive dysfunction could not be established .Most of the patients could not afford to get specific investigations done such as serum iron. TIBC, serum ferritin and transferring saturation, so the relation of these variables to the severity of these cognitive deficits could not be studied.